'Thinking as Form: The Drawings of Joseph Beuys'. Philadelphia and Chicago Review by: Charles W.

Haxthausen The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 136, No. 1090 (Jan., 1994), pp. 53-54 Published by: The Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/885724 . Accessed: 01/04/2014 03:20
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EXHIBITION

REVIEWS

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cabinet paintings. Here also there is high quality, as in the great Banquetpiece by Jan de Heem (no. 111) which is, for its degree of finish and detail, extraordinarily large. It is such a good and representative painting that one may well wonder why as many as five more paintings by him were selected for this show. There seems to be some redundancy here. The same may apply to Frans Snyders, who is certainly more varied than de Heem in style and subject matter, but his emphatic presence with seven paintings (including some in collaboration) probably does him too much honour. On the other hand, painters such as Jan Fyt and Pieter Boel, arguably with the same aesthetic and historical significance, feature with one painting only. Altogether, The Age of Rubensoffers us a broad overview of Flemish painting in the seventeenth century. The great masters are adequately represented, and the show gives a good idea of what was achieved by Flemish painters in the various genres. This is not to say that the extraordinary phenomenon of the flowering of the arts in the Southern Netherlands in the seventeenth century is really expounded in its full complexity, but this is hardly an objective that could have been realised in one exhibition. Some aspects or artists may have been somewhat overemphasised, and others underplayed (fbr history painting some quite important names are missing, and the second half of the century as well as the artistic scene in cities other than Antwerp has been somewhat neglected). It is hoped that this exhibition will succeed in its aim to instil in the American public an appreciation for this rich tradition. Some notes on individual works follow:
No.2: The collaborator of Hendrik de Clerk is not Jan Brueghel but Denys van Alsloot. No.10: An extra argument fbr the suggestion that the composition was enlarged afterwards is the Snyders drawing of an eagle (British Museum, reproduced); it is however a ricordo rather than a 'study' as its left edge corresponds with the seam in the canvas. No.12: The name 'Subter' which figures in the 1635 Buckingham inventory is most likely a faulty transcription, in the final draft, of the name 'Snider', as he figures elsewhere in this document.

19th the Art Institute of Chicago, February to 24th April) demonstrate that what Beuys termed 'drawing' exemplified this expanded concept as much as did his 00 eat objects and actions. Ultimately, 'drawing' for him was not a matter of medium but of dimensions: in the Beuysian lexicon, drawing was any physical sign of mental activity that was preserved and presented in a two-dimensional format. The category encompassed not only traditional drawing media but also oil paint, felt, blood, grease, .............................. pressed plants, and other unconventional substances; not merely iconic representation 56. Adorationof the but writing, typing, stamping, staining, Magi, byJohann And what he initially practised affixing. Boeckhorst. 1652. as a private, intimate medium of artistic 181.6 by 249 cm. exploration became one of public perform(Bob Jones ance. University, A traditional kind ofdrawing dominated exh. Greenville; the long period of relative artistic isolation Museum of Fine in which Beuys worked from the end of Arts, Boston). the Second World War until the early No.14: The lingering doubt whether the animals 1960s. These early sheets are typically should be attributed to Snyders or to Paul de Vos figurative representations, mostly women, can now be dispelled: a recent cleaning of the animals, landscapesimages in which we Orpheusin the Prado (no.1844), in which the anisee Beuys's mental world taking shape. mals are very similar and have traditionally been Those from the late 40s and early 50s tend attributed to de Vos, has revealed Frans Snyders's to be rendered in faint, delicate graphite signature (as well as that of Van Thulden for the lines; in the early 50s he also began to figure). work increasingly with liquid media. Many Nos.15a and b: The proposed dating 1620-22 is unof these drawings can seem almost artless, convincing: the 1630s would be preferable. No.16: Certainly not a portrait of Nicolaes Rockox and yet they possess a strange beauty (a and to be dated earlier, c. 1610-11. quality to which Beuys claimed indifferNo.17: The landscape is rather by Jan Brueghel the ence). Certain renderings of animals and younger. of women evoke Palaeolithic art; others, on No.48: French school? torn, stained fragments of paper, suggest No.61: The attribution to Jean de Reyn finds some archaeological finds, remnants of some corroboration in the fact that a very similar head vanished culture in which drawings had (looking out of the painting and thus possibly a not yet become 'art'. This effect was not self-portrait) occurs in his Adoration of the Magi in accidental: Beuys, against the grain of Bergues (signed and dated 1641: see La peinture flamande au temps de Rubens, exh.cat., Lille-Calaismodernism, was fond of speaking of his Arras [1977], no.46). drawings as a materialised form of thought; No.90: The church in the background seems indeed their value lay in their function as signs, (as stated in the catalogue) to be that ofAlsemberg. not as expressions of feeling or as autonSince the spire of that church burned down on omous, aesthetically pleasing configurations 23rd June 1653 (not to be rebuilt before the nineof indeterminate ideational content. Of teenth century) this may be suggested as a terminus all modern artists, Leonardo came closest ante quem. to his ideal - not Leonardo the painter, ARNOUT BALIS Centrum dePlastische voor Kunsten but Leonardo the thinker, who left countNationaal van de 16de en de 17de Eeuw, Antwerp less traces of his thinking in graphic form. In the works executed in liquid media, *The Age of Rubens, by Peter C. Sutton, with the the primary thought embodied in the collaboration of Marjorie E. Wieseman and David drawings seems to have been about process Freedberg, Jeffrey M. Muller, Lawrence W. Nichols, more than about the motif, which in many Konrad Renger, Hans Vlieghe, Christopher White, instances becomes nearly indecipherable. Anne T. Woollett. 630 pp. incl. numerous ills. in col. In Untilled(Salamander and b. & w. (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in associI) (Fig.57) executed in Beize (apparently a ferric chloride solation with Ludion Press, Ghent). ISBN 0-8109-1935-4 (HB); 0-87846-404-2 (PB). ution) and hare's blood, Beuys managed to preserve a sense of the original liquid state of the medium - indeed the figures have a waxen quality reminiscent of certain Philadelphia and Chicago of his early sculptures. And the process 'Thinking as Form: The Drawings of through which the fluid media assume a Joseph Beuys' fixed, stable form itself exemplifies Beuys's idea of sculpture- the moulding of fluid Drawing might seem a narrow, conventional focus for the first major Beuys exhimatter into solid form. Woman, because bition the United States has seen in fourteen of the nature of her reproductive function, was closely identified with Beuys's concepyears. Beuys, after all, tirelessly preached an 'expanded concept of art'; he sought to tion of sculpture; the sculptural process democratise artistic activity by redefining reproduces the life process, from conception it as any and all manifestations of human to decay. The incorporation of blood as a medium underlines that analogy. creativity. Yet the nearly 200 works in the This 'sculptural' concept of drawing retrospective Thinkingas Form: The Drawmust have stimulated Beuys to develop ings of Joseph Beuys (closes Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2nd January; then at a thick the medium he called Braunkreuz, 53

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EXHIBITION

REVIEWS

57. Untitled (Salamander I), byJoseph Beuys. 1958. Hare's blood, Beizeand pencil on cardboard, 29.5 by 21 cm. (Kluser collection, Munich; exh. Art Institute of Chicago).

reddish brown pigment that he began using around 1960 (in her catalogue essay, Ann Temkin is particularly illuminating on the overdetermined connotations of this term).' Like fat and felt in his sculptures, Braunkreuzfunctions as primal matter; employed monochromatically, it emphasises paint as plastic substance rather than as hue; in its materiality it dramatises drawing as formation rather than as delineation. In its colour and, occasionally, in its consistency, Braunkreuz has fecal associations that, besides evoking a process of organic transformation, seem especially apt for someone who once characterised his objects as the 'waste products' of his activities.2 Significantly, the introduction

of Braunkreuz also coincides with a new category of drawing for Beuys: from then on, many 'drawings' are not iconic representations at all but lists, notes, calendar pages, the detritus of Beuys's manifold activities, marked or partially overlaid with this trademark substance (Fig.58). Here, the addition of Braunkreuz seems to signify that these ephemera, these hasty scrawls indicating a mind at work, are also art. To this same end Beuys often used a Braunkreuzcoloured ink stamp. Beuys did not limit the application of Braunkreuzmerely to his own products. It became a means of appropriating the most diverse range of quotidian artefacts - texts, images, and objects from commerce, journalism, and advertising. The merest trace of Braunkreuz serves to allegorise them with Beuysian metaphors. One of the most striking examples in the exhibition is a featurpage from the Frankfurter Allgemeine, ing an illustrated article on a Soviet mobile nuclear power-plant. By affixing one of his own drawings, linking it to the news photo by means of a skein of Braunkreuz, and painting a brown cross onto each, Beuys appropriates this curious object as a metaphor of art as generator of spiritual energy. The exhibition is marked by a chronological imbalance that is profoundly indicative of a change in Beuys's attitude toward drawing: 135 objects cover the twenty-two year period from 1948 to 1969, while only thirty-two date from the last sixteen years of his career. In a 1969 interview, Beuys conceded that his interest in producing objects was diminishing and that his teaching was his greatest work of art.3 It is at precisely this time that the function of drawing changes. After 1970 conventional drawing usually functions as the servant of language, as schematic illustrations of a message conveyed in speech or writing. This is evident in several smaller sheets, but most dramatically in the large blackboards that Beuys used in his lectures 58. To: 'Manresa', by
Joseph Beuys.

(Fig.59). The ideas he had initially explored through images and materials in the remarkable drawings of the 40s or 50s here find a more precise articulation in language, albeit a visually less absorbing one. Here drawing and performance, formerly the discrete, private and public spheres of Beuys's activity, are synthesised. Interestingly, as 'drawing' became more semantically focused for Beuys, his later sculptures, such as The end of the twentieth centuryand FPlight,seem to have become less so, gaining at the same time a formal concentration and suggestive power that are no less effective for being more conventional. The catalogue, with extended essays by Ann Temkin and Bernice Rose, is a welcome addition to the still sparse and qualitatively spotty literature in English. Perhaps to avoid the distorting gloss of so many recent German publications on the artist, they have opted fobra matte finish that unfortunately dulls some of the more delicate works to the limits of legibility. But the texts are valuable and rich in insights. Temkins's two essays happily go beyond Beuys's drawings to discuss his art and theory as a whole. With Caroline Tisdall's indispensable catalogue of the 1979 Guggenheim retrospective long out of print, this publication is now the best introduction to the artist available in English.
CHARLES W. IIAXTIIAUSEN

Williams Williamstown College, as Form. TheDrawings 'Thinking ofJoseph By Beuys.

Man: JosephBeuys in America. for the Western Writings withtheArtist, ed. c. KUJONI, New by andInterviews

278 pp. + 62 figs.and 172col. by DieterKoepplin. and b. & w. pls. (Thames& Hudsonwith Philaof ModernArt, delphia Museumof Art/Museum NewYork,1993),?29.95. ISBN 0-87633-089-8. 2'Interview withWilloughby Sharp',in EneryPlan

Ann Temkin and Bernice Rose, with a contribution

York,[1990],p.85. "Ibid., p.86.

1966.Oil , (Braunkreuz) pencil,penand inkon paper,

29.5 by 21 cm. (Private

collection, Switzerland;
exh. Art Institute of Chicago).

S59.

Beuys.1978. Oneofthree chalk panels, on slate,133by

'7

Action third way,byJoseph

133cm. (each).

(Helge
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Achenbach, Duiisseldorf; exh. Art Institute of

58

5'

'

Chicago).

59.

54 54

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